Saturday, March 17, 2007

Nick Randolph, co-author of WROX's Professional Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft Visual Developer/Device Application Development MVP , has published a two-part demonstration for using the Orcas March 2007 CTP's new Sync Designer that starts when you add a Local Database Cache (LocalDataCache1.sync) template to your project.

Part 1 stops at the Add New Item dialog that displays Local Database Cache and Service-based Database templates.

Part 2 continues with the Configure Data Synchronization and Configure Tables for Offline Use dialogs.

10. When I attempted to generate a typed data set from Northwind.sdf with the Data Source Configuration Wizard under virtualized Vista, I received this informative error message:

This message has nothing to do with SSCE. It also occurs when attempting to create a typed DataSet from SSCE or SQL Server [Express] with the Data Source Configuration Wizard under Vista in my configuration. A search for the error message returns a link to this even less informative suggestion from the MSDN Library: "Inspect the error message and check for any errors in the Task List (Visual Studio) that can be fixed."

11. I received this error message when attempting to save any changes, such as adding the DataRelationship between the Orders and Order Details tables to the DataSet Designer for the client SSCE database's typed DataSet. This exception occurs under virtualized Windows Vista and virtualized Windows Server 2003 R2:

12. I set the sync interval to 5 minutes, but was unable to detect any evidence that synchronization was occurring between the SSCE client and SSX server.

Subsequently, I wrote a Sync Services test harness to add the DataRelation for the client and a customized SyncGroup at runtime. A future blog post and Visual Studio Magazine article will provide more details on the test harness.

I plan to redo the test drive with virtualized Windows XP SP2 after I finish the test harness studies.

The dual Web role application has been running in Microsoft's South Central US (San Antonio) data center since September 2009. I believe it is the oldest continuously running Windows Azure application.

About Me

I'm a Windows Azure Insider, a retired Windows Azure MVP, the principal developer for OakLeaf Systems and the author of 30+ books on Microsoft software. The books have more than 1.25 million English copies in print and have been translated into 20+ languages.

Full disclosure: I make part of my livelihood by writing about Microsoft products in books and for magazines. I regularly receive free evaluation software from Microsoft and press credentials for Microsoft Tech•Ed and PDC. I'm also a member of the Microsoft Partner Network.